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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”